Smileband health topics

Sexism means discrimination based on sex or gender, or the belief that men are superior to women and thus discrimination is justified.  Such a belief can be conscious or unconscious. In sexism as in racism the differences between two (or more) groups are viewed as indications that one group is superior or inferior.

Sexist discrimination against girls and women is a means of maintaining male domination and power.  The oppression or discrimination can be economic, political, social, or cultural.

Thus, included in sexism are:

• Sexist attitudes or ideology, including beliefs, theories, and ideas that hold one group (usually male) as deservedly superior to the other (usually female) and that justify oppressing members of the other group on the basis of their sex or gender.
• Sexist practices and institutions, the ways in which oppression is carried out. These need not be done with a conscious sexist attitude, but may be unconscious cooperation in a system which has been in place already in which one sex (usually female) has less power and goods in the society. Sexism is a form of oppression and domination.  As author Octavia Butler put it, "Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world."